Joseph Marohl

Six days after the inauguration—six days after Pastor Rick Warren, looking like a reupholstered Jerry Falwell, bestows his blessings on America and Barack Obama’s Presidency—the Chinese New Year begins.

It will be the Year of the Ox. Oxen, as you probably know, are castrated bulls.

Lacking a true gift for superstition, I assign little real importance to this fact. But as horoscopy goes, Chinese astrology has always served me better than the Western version. Under the latter, I am an Aries, therefore, stubborn, egoistic, combative, impulsive to the point of foolhardiness, all moral sense subjugated to raging lust. Fair enough. Under the former, I am a Snake, therefore, carnal, sensuous, intellectual, artistic, unforgiving with a preternaturally long memory for grudges. Bull’s eye.

The United States is in deeper debt to China—$585 billion—than to any other nation, only another reason to believe our collective futures lie in Chinese hands. So let me peer into my weathered, brittle paperbound edition of Theodora Lau’s The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes, copyright 1980, to see what the new year holds in store.

Lau opens her section on The Year of the Ox with the statement: “We will feel the yoke of responsibility coming down on us this year.” Okay, so after 2008, we could all see this one coming, though Lau pegged it 28 years ago. She follows with “The trials and tribulations the Ox year brings will be mainly on the home front. It is a good time to settle domestic affairs and put your house in order.” Henry Paulson should only have been this prescient.

After stating that the Ox views politics and diplomacy, along with frivolities of every sort, with indifference, Lau begins to sound like my dad: “No work, no pay! … The Spartan influence of the Ox will be a constantly cracking whip over our heads. [T]he year of the Ox favors discipline. … This is no time for tricky shortcuts.”

Just so I get her point, Lau aims a closing shot directly at me: “For the rebels, it may be worthwhile to point out that although the stoical Ox is soft-spoken, he carries a big stick, and this is his year.”

In particular, the year 2009 will be the year of the “Earth” Ox—not a nod to environmentalism, though no doubt cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the planet is part of the work cut out for us. The Earth Ox favors duty over creativity, practicality over idealism, stability over progress, sense over sensibility, endurance over complaint, and determination over cynicism.

On a happier note, children born next year can be expected to whine less (“This child will not be a crybaby”), value privacy more, and exhibit patience, perseverance, and responsibility. Ox-people thrive on discipline and order (Richard Nixon, the Emperor Hirohito and Adolph Hitler were all Ox-people, but, happily, so were Walt Disney, Vincent Van Gogh, and Charlie Chaplin).

Astrology aside, it seems clear to me that we have work to do in the coming year. Given the work’s immense importance—to our pocketbooks, to peace, to justice, to life, to the preservation of what it means to be human—it’s important that we look at the tasks ahead with all the optimism we can humanly muster. We must persevere to survive.

We must not panic, and we must contain our worries and sense of dread. We need to gain or regain a sense of the common good—set aside our private interests, if necessary, even perhaps our high ideals (at least the ones so high we can’t actually see the tops of)—and pitch in to make things better than they are.

Even without lunar insights, I can pretty well assure you that we will not entirely solve the mess we’re in—and are about to slip into deeper—even with God’s and Obama’s help. But we can take a point or two from the stoical Ox, and whine and moan a little less, however Mad Max the world becomes, and temper the cynicism we’ve so carefully cultivated since our freshmen years at college with a little kindness and humane understanding.

One certainty I subscribe to, which all forms of astrology support: Things will change.

The Smoking Argus

As we get ready to shuffle off the “Crisis of ’08″ for the “Collapse of ’09″ we present to you our loyal readers, a look back at some of the best posts from our 4th Quarter debut…

• “Small Town America” by: Kelly Frahm
  




• “The fairness Doctrine: Internet Censorship Coming Soon to a Web page Near You” by: Allison Bricker
  




• “Ruskin’s 21st Century (an educator’s rant)” by: Joseph Marohl
  




• “Putting the ‘Mental’ in Fundamentalist” by: Mandy Hyndman
  




• “Mindlessness is for the Birds” by: Mandy Hyndman




• “Bailout Will Lead to Economic Depression” by: Allison Bricker




• “Why My Vote for President will not go to Senator Obama” by: Allison Bricker




• “Boys to Men” by: Joseph Marohl

We look forward to providing our insight and analysis in the coming years ahead. Thank you to everyone who has helped make our first 4 months in the blogosphere an absolutely positive experience.

Kelly

My Christmas wish this year was an intangible impossibility, to say the least. But, I was feeling a desperation that actually tempted me to long for a pause, like a stop button on a remote control that would allow us to stay hidden in 2008 just a little while longer. Long enough to get our bearings and thoughtfully prepare for the coming year. By prepare, I do not mean writing out my resolutions for 2009. To prepare, in this context, I mean saving enough paychecks to have a food supply that can sustain my family for a few years, or saving enough paychecks to move us to the middle of nowhere in hopes of being safe. Not plausible, and I assure you-I understand that. We have no control over time and the way it thrusts us into week after week. Christmas has come and gone, the way it does every year. And in a few short days 2009 will be upon us.

The reality, it seems, is that we are quite possibly headed for the most difficult times of our lives. And though I would prefer to take the bull by the horns and reign in the new year with a “positive” outlook, squinting through the bleak forecast of economic turmoil has shaped my outlook as anything but positive. In all honesty, it is breathtakingly scary. Breathtaking would describe how we arrived at this point, all of us asleep at the wheel and working for Washington, distracted by playdates and Super Bowls, tivo and the iPhone; there was something for everyone and a credit card or second mortgage to make it happen. Scary is what comes next, as we shift gears away from consumerism and pull the curtain back from an ideology that has trapped us.

Print and spend, tax and spend, stir until slightly lumpy. Throw in a few wars, namely the most recent Iraq War, an unsustainable social security and medicaid program, lace it with NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO, sprinkle with bureaucrats, while the bankers heat and serve. A recipe for disaster is baking in America’s oven.

It will be the year of the awakening. Unfortunately, our awakening will not come without despair.

Gerald Celente, of the Trends Research Institute and a leading trends forecaster for over twenty years, has had much to say about the coming year(s); warning us that the next Great Depression is underway.

Gearld Celente talks about the last retail Christmas-11/10/2008

Gerald Celente on The Lew Rockwell Show-12/14/2008

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Joseph Marohl

Despite its title, Doubt, the movie and presumably the play (which latter I have not read or seen), offers a good many answers—and only one question.

First, one thing the film accomplishes with dramatic clarity is to distinguish between pedophilia and homosexuality.  Anyone (say, Rick Warren and his admirers) who has any doubts on this matter should see Doubt.  The film handily separates the two issues—though I won’t say how.

Second, the film answers the question of which is better, doubt or certainty.  Though some audiences may find the film’s answer equivocal, I think it’s fairly direct—doubt is better in building community and a connection with others; certainty is better in reaching short-term solutions to immediate problems—while tending to polarize members of a community and often failing to make needed changes to a larger system of corruption.

Third, the film answers the question of whether it’s all right to do something bad in order to accomplish something that’s good.  Yes.  And no.  Here the answer sounds exactly like what you’d expect your priest to offer you—the same guy who tells you that God does answer every prayer; only sometimes the answer is no.

The question that remains unanswered at the end of Doubt is of what, if anything, is Father Flynn guilty.  Even here, the film offers heavy hints—but ultimately the hints support a multitude of answers, equally plausible.

But neither these answers nor the intriguing brainteaser is the reason to see Doubt.

You should see Doubt for one main reason:  Meryl Streep.

How this actress continues to astound is, well, um, astounding.  My dear friend Mary and I have deified Streep as a goddess in our own private religion.  What is remarkable about her talent is that she accomplishes both ends of the movie star’s typical dilemma—do I lose myself in the character? or do I make myself impossible not to watch?  Streep, of course, does both … in virtually every film she’s made … and nowhere better than in the role of Sister Aloysius in this film.

The wonder of this incredible actor is not how she has earned an astounding number (14!) of Oscar nominations, but rather why the fuck she hasn’t won them all … and even more.  That she has won only two is a stain on the reputation of the Academy Awards.

Sure, other actors are in Doubt and they all do remarkable work, blah blah blah.  No disrespect intended—I love them all.  But without Meryl Streep, this movie would have been merely a reasonably strong film adaptation of a stage play.  With Streep, it is something of an event—life altering as well as brain teasing.

I also want to add some good words for the writer and director John Patrick Shanley.  Having twenty years ago won an Oscar for his original screenplay Moonstruck, Shanley takes his first shot as a director in this, the adaptation of his successful stage play starring Cherry Jones.

I do think the last minute of the film suffers from an overly theatrical gesture and an arguably incongruous change of heart (or, at any rate, affect).  But the film up to that point is nearly flawless on a number of levels.  It beautifully captures the setting of mid-1960s America.  It is a visually arresting movie.

It maintains a single stark tone for 104 minutes—relies heavily on dialogue, even monologue (three sermons!)—while remaining entirely cinematic.

Especially early in the film, it makes lucid though only implicit comparisons between post-JFK-assassination angst and post-9/11 angst.

It captures, too, the still problematic way American society treats its minority groups—how lack of understanding or tolerance quickly evolves into violence, both physical and emotional. It portrays the marginalized position of women in the Church—most eloquently in crosscut scenes of priests chortling over their red wine and rare steaks and nuns silently sipping their milk and—what was that shit? —porridge?

We see in this film that abuse is not just a matter of sexual abuse or physical brutality.  Spiritual, psychological abuse, including self-abuse, appears to be the most damning form of abuse of all.

Doubt is a film that believers and infidels can alike enjoy and learn from.  It touches on much more than Christian faith.  It addresses the ways we know the truth, any truth, and the responsibilities we must take on, on the basis of that knowledge.

Joseph Marohl

Acclaimed playwright, political activist, and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter died yesterday at age 78.

His best-known plays include The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming. He also wrote screenplays.

It’s often said that his plays became overtly political in his later years-some critics even made the observation as a reproach-but an interest in power, thus politics, is central to even his early dramas of family life.

His work portrays, with vivid understatement, how one strong-willed individual is able to control the behavior of multiple others simply by conjuring some vague, outside menace, in response to which, otherwise capable adults willingly put themselves in his thrall.

Furthermore, no matter how brutish the tyrant is, the weak though not altogether powerless dependents show the utmost care in preserving his delicate ego, bending over backwards so as not to offend their supposed protector. Clearly, assholes maintain control because others acquiesce, often simply to preserve the pretense of their own “niceness.”

The artful pauses in Pinter’s plays are the direct result of the characters’ inability or unwillingness to address situations bluntly and realistically. The underlying tension is both erotic and violent, and if and when it erupts to the play’s surface, the effect is all the more disturbing.

Pinter inspired all the playwrights who matter to me, from Joe Orton in England to David Mamet in the US to Martin McDonagh in Ireland-in style if not altogether in the issues that interest them. I have greatly admired Pinter’s style and achievement for decades.

I never met the man. My personal connection to Pinter is through one of his late plays, One for the Road, in which I played a small role at its 1986 US premiere in Charleston, SC, as part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Amnesty International, which Pinter actively supported.

The play centers on Nicolas, a petty functionary in an unidentified authoritarian state, whose cheerfulness and can-do attitude chillingly contrast with the fact that he is torturing a family-a father (ironically named Victor, the role I played), a mother, and their child-though the word “torture” is not once uttered in the play.

Nicolas sees himself as the defender of the good (“Everyone else knows the voice of God speaks through me? You’re not a religious man, I take it?”). Therefore, the word “torture” cannot apply to him, however much he practices its substance.

Pinter saw the theatre as a phenomenon for both social engagement and aesthetic experimentation. He brought Samuel Beckett’s stark surrealism into suburban sitting rooms-inventing a minutely detailed style of observing and portraying human behavior. His presence will be missed, but his legacy lives on in the best of contemporary drama.

Allison Bricker

Merry Christmas to all of our loyal readers.  We truly appreciate your continued support and look forward to providing our insight and analysis on the stories and issues the main stream media either cannot or will not report.

2008 has certainly been the most challenging year Americans have faced in more than a generation, but it is our hope that as everyone gathers with friends and families; we all might get just a little closer to the true sprit and meaning of the holdiays.

Allison Bricker

With the Christmas Season in full swing, we invite you to check out some of the truly talented people we have been fortunate to come across in our blogging travels…

1. Rick Williams, a practicing attorney, former Deacon and one of the Founding Partners of Break The Matrix hosts his show daily starting at 7:00pm Central Standard Time.  There is also an interactive chat where Mr. Williams fields questions, so be sure to drop by and participate in the lively discussion.




2. Aimee Allen is a self-made musician whose songs have appeared on major motion picture soundtracks such as the Grammy nominated ”Hairspray” and whose “Ron Paul Revolution” video went viral this past Summer on YouTube. Her website also offers free MP3 downloads of some of her recent and past works for your listening enjoyment.

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3. Jordan Page an independent musician with a talent for writing Dillionesque lyrics backed by soulful guitar. He offers up his brand of thoughtful and passionate protest songs geared towards restoring the Constitution and the reclamation of lost liberties.

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Allison Bricker

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) discussing the auto bailout given to the Big 3 by President Bush.

Joseph Marohl

I’m hard pressed to find much to distinguish what director Gus Van Sant accomplishes in his biopic Milk that was not already accomplished in the Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein.

Both are excellent films. Both use archival footage to chronicle the life and times of America’s first openly gay public official. Both use Milk’s taped last will—recorded in the event of his assassination—as the thread upon which to construct the plot. Both regard their central figure as both a devious politician and a true American idealist.

What most obviously distinguishes the more recent film is the bravura performance (another one) by Sean Penn as Milk. Penn breaks my heart in this. Not just because of his character’s fate, which, like the Epstein documentary, opens the film, so that the imminence of death is felt at every step, but mostly because Penn captures Milk’s magnetism and mannerisms, along with, more profoundly, merely human moments—like the thrill of falling in love or fighting for a great, just cause.

Van Sant’s film covers Milk’s life from 1970 to his death in 1978 and appropriately reduces the events subsequent to Dan White’s assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone to a brief captioned epilogue.

Instead, it provides deeper insight to Milk’s loving relationships with Scott Smith (James Franco) and Jack Lira (Diego Luna). Van Sant is able to use these relationships to portray a more complex picture of gay life—not pleading for tolerance and equality, as did the documentary—but showing how the personal and the political can converge and clash and presenting us the audience with a fuller panoply of gay characters than we usually get to see at the movies.

Josh Brolin’s nuanced performance as Dan White is also remarkable. Whereas Epstein’s film mainly presents White as the iceberg that would eventually sink Milk’s Titanic, Van Sant’s film shows the pressures of maintaining and upholding hetero-normativity as a political issue and the toll of staking too much of one’s self-identity on one’s being “normal.”

What makes the new film in many ways a more (or differently) elegant film than its predecessor is its attempt to show how, over and over, Milk and White attempt and fail to reach out to each other—especially in a realistic scene of White’s drunkenly pathetic exchange with Milk at the latter’s birthday party—and this is the tragic heart of the film.

Allison Bricker

Video interview of Peter Schiff on CNN Your Money debating the auto industry bailout.